The Friday Roundup – Camera Shake, Auto-Focus and LUT Limitations

LUTS: The Complete Video Guide

A few weeks back now on April Fool’s Day Casey Faris put out an incredible video purporting to announce the release of his amazing automatic super LUT called Pegasus.

According to the video it could instantly create the perfect look for any footage by automatically correcting everything in it and making it perfect.

Now a lot of people got themselves all excited over the possibility of such a thing and lost track of the fact that it was April Fool’s Day!

Anyway as the video went on and on the claims they were making about what the LUT could do were getting more and more outrageous until at one point they stated that the LUT could even add tracking motion to an otherwise still video shot!

Finally at the end they confessed that there was no such LUT but you had to admire the quality of the joke.

How to Add Camera Shake to Your Videos

In these high definition days probably the greatest enemy that we have to shooting footage effectively is that of camera shake.

The downside of high def is that unlike standard definition, every little detail is captured in a super accurate way and this unfortunately extends to camera movement.

On the other hand there are times when you may actually want to add camera shake to your footage as an effect.

The absolute worst way to do that is by actually shaking the camera!

Using that method offers no control whatsoever and the results you get may be nothing like you imagined.

The best way to achieve the effect is by using a filter in your video editing software and just about all decent brands of software these days come with a couple of different and adjustable camera shake options.

To get a quick overview of using these filters check out the video below.

As usual, even though this tutorial is done using Filmora, the process is exactly the same regardless of software brand.

ProRes RAW Explained, Demonstrated, Discussed

Each year one of the biggest events in the world of video is the NAB Show in Las Vegas.

It is at this event that you tend to see not just the latest and greatest but also small tastes of perhaps what is to come in the future.

One such item of interest that came up this year was the announcement regarding the release of the ProRes RAW file type.

Now if you are a professional video person this would be of great interest.

If you are not a pro it would be easy to walk right by this one without giving it a second thought!

Just bear in mind hat whatever is happening at the pointy end of research and development will eventually make it down to the consumer level.

PowerDirector 16 – Rotate Objects Tutorial

The video below is a pretty simple and straightforward introduction to the PiP Designer in PowerDirector 16 and shows how to use that module to rotate objects.

Although it is not really rocket surgery in itself as far as creating effects goes, it does offer a good introduction to the PiP Designer and the kind of things you can do within it.

PowerDirector has a lot of powerful yet hidden features like this so it’s good to take a little tour around it every now and then.